Camp meeting

The camp meeting is a form of Protestant Christian religious service originating in England and Scotland as an evangelical event in association with the communion season.

The practice was a major component of the Second Great Awakening, an evangelical movement promoted by Baptist, Methodist, Presbyterian and other preachers in the early 19th century.

Scots and Scots-Irish predominated in many parts of the frontier at this time, and had brought their familiar Presbyterian communion season practices with them.

Due to the primitive means of transportation, if the meeting was to be more than a few miles' distance from the homes of those attending, they would need to stay at the revival for its entire duration, or as long as they desired to remain.

Some came out of sincere religious devotion or interest, others out of curiosity and a desire for a break from the arduous frontier routine; the structure of the situation often resulted in new converts.

By the second or third day, people were crying out during the sermons, and shouting prayers, and bursting into loud lamentations; they began grabbing at their neighbors and desperately pleading with them to repent; they sobbed uncontrollably and ran in terror through the crowd, shoving aside everybody in their path.

In the night, as the torches and bonfires flared around the meeting ground and the darkness of the trackless forests closed in, people behaved as if possessed by something new and unfathomable.

"[4]Sandlin's commentary is a provocative opinion piece compared to the less sensationalist descriptions by those better qualified to write about the event, such as Colonel Robert Patterson, who had been involved in the settlement of Kentucky practically from the beginning.

Of all ages, from 8 years and upwards; male and female; rich and poor; the blacks; and of every denomination; those in favour of it, as well as those, at the instant in opposition to it, and railing against it, have instantaneously laid motionless on the ground.

Some feel the approaching symptoms by being under deep convictions; their heart swells, their nerves relax, and in an instant they become motionless and speechless, but generally retain their senses.Patterson went on to describe other manifestations which lasted from "one hour to 24", and continued: In order to give you a more just conception of it, suppose so large a congregation assembled in the woods, ministers preaching day and night; the camp illuminated with candles, on trees, at wagons, and at the tent; persons falling down, and carried out of the crowd, by those next to them, and taken to some convenient place, where prayer is made for them, some Psalm or Hymn, suitable to the occasion, sung.

A particularly large and successful revival was held at Cane Ridge, Kentucky in 1801, led by some ministers later active in what became the Restoration Movement.

[3] What made camp meetings successful and multiply quite rapidly "were their emphases upon revivalism and morality, de-emphasis upon formal theology, clergy sharing the worldview of the frontier dwellers, and respect for common people.

[3] Frost summarizes: "Camp-meeting religion reinforced older themes of revivalism, including a sense of cooperation among the denominations, all of which confronted individual sinners with the necessity of making a decision to be converted.

"[3] In the early 1800s in what is now Toronto, Ohio, members of the Sugar Grove Methodist Episcopal Church with the assistance of circuit preachers began a series of camp meetings in the surrounding area.

In the mid-Atlantic states, the Methodist Church led many of these camp meetings and established semi-permanent sites for summer seasons.

Some are still held in the 21st century, primarily by Methodist (including churches affiliated with the holiness movement) and Pentecostal groups, as well as other Protestants, such as Baptists and Presbyterians.

Both tunes and words were created, changed, and adapted in true folk music fashion:[12] Specialists in nineteenth-century American religious history describe camp meeting music as the creative product of participants who, when seized by the spirit of a particular sermon or prayer, would take lines from a preacher's text as a point of departure for a short, simple melody.

The line would be sung repeatedly, changing slightly each time, and shaped gradually into a stanza that could be learned easily by others and memorized quickly.

Rough and irregular couplets or stanzas were concocted out of Scripture phrases and every-day speech, with liberal interspersing of Hallelujahs and refrains.

Such ejaculatory hymns were frequently started by an excited auditor during the preaching, and taken up by the throng, until the meeting dissolved into a "singing-ecstasy" culminating in general hand-shaking.

Many of these camp songs are also set in a "call and response" format, typically, every line of lyric is followed by the words "Glory Hallelujah!"

[19][20] Christianity • Protestantism Francis Asbury, the first bishop of the American Methodist Episcopal Church, was a staunch supporter of camp meetings.

The altar rail, originated the point for receiving Holy Communion, came to represent the surrender of oneself in conversion and entire sanctification.

Ocean Grove "prohibited other activities deemed not consonant with Christian living--dancing, cardplaying, and the sale of liquor.

At the time, Wesleyan Methodists disapproved and subsequently expelled Hugh Bourne "because you have a tendency to set up other than the ordinary worship.".

Hugh Bourne, William Clowes and Daniel Shoebotham saw this as an answer to complaints from members of the Harriseahead Methodists that their weeknight prayer meeting was too short.

Bourne also saw these as an antidote to the general debauchery of the Wakes week in that part of the Staffordshire Potteries, one of the reasons why he continued organising camp meetings in spite of the opposition from the Wesleyan authorities.